Rogan walks up the stone path to the front door and turns when he realizes I’m not following him. I study him, and he studies me, both of us silent and distant, and I fucking hate it.
“I know a lot has happened,” I start, my voice small amidst the huge house and the dense woods all around us. “We have a lot to figure out, a lot to process.”
Rogan steps away from the house and closer to me as I continue.
“If you need space, time to sort out whatever is going on in your head, fine, but blocking me, shutting me out, that fucking hurts, Rogan,” I tell him, not wanting to pretend everything is okay for even another second.
He opens his mouth to say something, but the front door opens and Elon comes striding out. He wraps Rogan up in a hug, the brothers taking a moment to reunite, the gratitude and relief palpable in the air. I feel like an interloper watching a deep and meaningful moment, so I quietly try to move around them and make my way toward the house. Elon reaches out and hooks me like I’m a fish, and the next thing I know, he’s added me to the hug.
“I was so fucking terrified that you two didn’t make it out. When I woke up and Prek told me…” Elon wipes at his eyes, and his words trail away.
“We wouldn’t have if Lennox hadn’t saved our asses,” Rogan tells his older brother, and Elon’s arms tighten around us both. “I’m sorry I…” Rogan starts and then stops as though he’s trying to figure out how to say what he wants to say. “When Marx fell, I just... All I could see was red. I wanted to kill, to hurt...but I lost sight of what was important,” he goes on, his words tight with emotion as though each and every syllable is a struggle.
Pain and grief spill out between the lines of what he’s saying, and I hurt for him and for the rest of us. Lights beam past us, and I look up to find another SUV pulling up. It stops at the end of the path, and we all watch as a tall man with ash brown hair and beard climbs out of the driver’s seat.
“You got room for one more?” he asks teasingly, and both Elon and Rogan laugh deeply.
The passenger door opens while the driver rounds the front of the sleek carbon gray SUV, and I see Tad climb out with bags in his hands. His brown eyes find mine, and a huge smile breaks across his face.
“I brought wine!”
I practically leap for him, and Tad doesn’t miss a beat when he drops the packages in his grip and catches me. He wraps me up so quickly and fiercely in amend your soultype of hug that I don’t know who needed it more, me or him. He squeezes the shit out of me, and then I do what I always do when I finally feel safe after something terrible happens, I allow myself to break and then start bawling my eyes out.
* * *
Itip the massive bottle of rosé back and hold my breath as I take several gulps. I lift my eyebrows in contemplation as I swallow them down—maybe this doesn’t taste so bad after all—but then my drunk tastebuds kick in, reminding me we hate wine, and I lower the bottle and cringe back away from it. Tad reaches for it with gimme hands, and I happily pass it over, my body warm and my mind all kinds of light and fuzzy.
I lean back against the large black apothecary-style vanity, once again admiring the beautiful master bathroom from my vantage point on the floor. The walls and ceiling are a rich walnut color, and beams run across the high vaulted ceiling. The floor is a gray stone and so is the back wall, which might be my favorite part.
There is a gargantuan copper bathtub against that wall, with stairs at the head and foot of the tub that lead to an upper stone deck that allows you to climb down into the tub. But the best part is that the deck also houses a gas fireplace with huge windows above it so you can see the stars. It’s a girl’s bathtub wet dream, and I didn’t even know those existed until I saw this one. The whole space is dark and masculine and dreamy, which makes it the perfect location to get thoroughly pissed with my cousin.
A dry shudder moves through my chest, an echo of the sobbing I stopped doing in trade for the drinking I started instead. It’s as though my body is still trying to purge the emotion but my eyes just aren’t on board at the moment.
Tad passes the bottle back to me, and I dutifully drink my share. I swear I’ve never seen a bottle of wine this big with its little feet on the label, but it makes me feel like I shrunk the last time I died and came back to life.
“Can you see my bullet holes?” I ask Tad, brushing hair away from where I felt the scars earlier.
Tad leans closer and squints at me. “Nope, but to be fair, there’s one and a half of you right now, and both of them are a skosh fuzzy,” he confesses, and I shrug and drop my tangled locks back down. “I need more wine if you’re going to talk about head wounds,” Tad declares, and I take a few more gulps before passing the bottle back.
“There’s something wrong with me,” I whine as I throw my head back and bang it on one of the many copper knobs attached to the five hundred drawers the vanity has. I glare at the knob, pissed that it got me again. “We talked about this,” I snap at it, giving it the angry mom finger and a withering glare. The knob doesn’t even flinch.
Hard ass.
“There is absolutely nothing wrong with you,” Tad reassures me as he tries to level me with a chastising gaze. Mostly it looks like he’s trying to figure out whichmeto focus on. “I mean other than the ratty hair,waytoo big sweat suit, and the bags your eyes are rocking, but you know what I mean,” he adds, and I refocus my withering glare from the knob to Tad.
Rude.
“I don’t mean in thewoe is me, existentialkind of way,” I correct him, tripping up way more than I should on the wordexistential. “I mean, there is literally something wrong with me, more specifically my magic, which is basically me because I am an Osteomancer, dammit.”
“Woot woot!” Tad cheers, like I just said let’s do shots instead of my magic is fucked up.
When I don’t join in on the cheer, Tad quiets, stares at the bottle of wine in his hand and then shrugs before slamming more of it down.
“Rogan knows, but he’s pulling a Rogan and keeping it to himself. Either that or he hates me because I killed Marx,” I moan, dropping my head into my hands, only I don’t get my hands up fast enough, so I just chin bump my chest.
Ow.
“Wait, you killed someone?” Tad asks, suddenly serious, minus the swaying his body is doing.
